(IsraelNN.com) Foreign investors who have been buying shekels with dollars on an unprecedented scale of hundreds of millions of dollars in a short time, are causing the dollar to fall about 1% to NIS 3.68 by 13:00.

Finance minister responds to Mideast envoy George Mitchell’s threat to freeze loan guarantees if Jewish state fails to make progress in peace process, says ‘we are doing very well without them.’ Education Minister Sa’ar: Israel will act in accordance with its interests ….

Four U.S. senators, including former presidential hopefuls John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, vowed during a visit to Israel Sunday that Congress would not approve cutting loan guarantees to the Jewish State. U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell proposed the option during an interview with American television journalist Charlie Rose. ….

… The Israeli firm ICTS International (not to be confused with ICTS Europe, which is a different company), and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden in his underwear. …

…. institutional discrimination is meant to preserve the supremacy of a group of Jewish settlers over Palestinian Arabs. As far as discriminatory practices are concerned, it’s hard to find differences between white rule in South Africa and Israeli rule in the territories; for example, separate areas and separate laws for Jews and Palestinians. …

Gaza Strip, soil has been contaminated due to bombings: population in danger. 17 December 2009

The 2006 and 2009 Israeli bombings in Gaza Strip have left a high concentration of toxic metals
in the soil. Those metals can cause tumours and problems with fertility, and they can have serious
effects on newly born babies, like deformities and genetic pathologies. The metals are in particular
tungsten, mercury, molybdenum, cadmium and cobalt. ….

My bureau will launch a massive campaign that will educate the citizens of Israel about country’s image problem in the world and call on those who intend to travel abroad to take part in its PR campaign, while directing them to a special site that will help them train for this purpose.”

… a shocking expose of those dismantling U.S. democracy from the inside. Labeling the new breed of U.S. political operators “flexions,” she finds individual roles as lobbyists, government insiders or elected officials converging into a single network “snaking through official and private organizations, creating a loop that is closed to democratic processes.” …

In Shadow Elite, Wedel teaches us to recognize and understand how this new group blurs and erases the boundaries between government, private, and nonprofit organizations—all to their own benefit. The shadow elite ultimately answer only to each other. They can be found lurking behind the scenes of Iran-Contra, Blackwater, and the scandal of Harvard economists in post-Soviet Russia—and they are steadily gaining power. Profoundly original, Shadow Elite gives us the tools that we need to fight this disturbing, destructive, and antidemocratic trend.

… the Washington directive, meant to battle tax evasion, will force the banks’ American clients – most of whom have dual citizenship – to either liquidate their assets or transfer them to other financial institutions. …

64% of the Israeli public think that the construction freeze is a tactical move and not a strategic one, and that it will again be possible to build in Judea and Samaria in nine months’ time, despite international pressure. …

… A long series of acts that have no rational explanation, or really any explanation whatsoever, raise the following suspicions: a loss of touch with reality; temporary or permanent insanity, paranoia, schizophrenia and megalomania; memory loss and loss of judgment. All of this must be examined, under careful observation.

The psychiatric specialists might be so kind as to try to explain how a country with leaders committed to a two-state solution continues to direct huge budgets toward building more settlements in territories it intends to vacate in the future. ….

The U.S. Army will double the value of emergency military equipment it stockpiles on Israeli soil, and Israel will be allowed to use the U.S. ordnance in the event of a military emergency, according to a report in Monday’s issue of the U.S. weekly Defense News. …